It has become conventional to organize personal computer workstations into Local Area Networks or LANs. File sharing from system to system within a LAN is conventionally done in one of two ways. Either there is peer-to-peer sharing established by operating system settings on workstations which are to enable such sharing or there is a file server connected to the LAN which provides storage capability accessible to all, or an identified number, of the systems connected to the LAN.
Notwithstanding this conventional practice, it is also conventional for individual systems connected to a LAN to have storage capability which may be underutilized by the workstation operator. Particularly as the data storing capacity of hard drives has risen dramatically in recent times, the storage requirements of an operating system and most application programs and stored data in a personal computer workstation are significantly less than the capability provided. Thus, within a LAN, there will likely be significant storage capability which is available for other use should the systems and network accommodate such use.
The present invention contemplates that storage capability otherwise going underutilized in a LAN be made available for sharing among workstations connected to the LAN. In realizing this purpose of the present invention, systems connected to a LAN are surveyed for storage capability potentially available for sharing, a weighting function is derived for each system which is indicative of shared system storage capability, and data files to be stored are scattered among and gathered from the connected systems.